Pages

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Raw Talking Points For Christmas Edition of Raw

Raw had its typical holiday offering last night. There wasn’t a ton of significant things as it basically just continued a number of existing feuds. The typical diva’s Christmas costume 6-women tag match. We had the new holiday tradition of the Miracle on 34th Street fight. Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt destroyed many Christmas themed items. Hulk Hogan was the host of Raw dressed up like Santa and he was his typical boring self. If you’re into Hogan, you probably found it fun. If you have had enough of Hogan this was evidence of why you do. Still we found some talking points from this holiday for the most part throwaway Raw show.1. Adam Rose Turns Heel on the Bunny: After a loss to R-Truth the Bunny still in his neck brace, after a couple attacks from Kane in the past week, he goes to comfort Rose after the match. Rose put a real serious beat down on the bunny. He would take off the Bunny’s neck brace and would continue the beating after the Bunny tried to escape to the outside. The highlight of the segment was the crowd chanting for Rose to throw the Bunny into the guardrail one more time. The crowd was not having any sympathy for Bunny, which was the goal of the segment. So Adam Rose is suppose to be a heel but at least on this night in Minnesota he was a face to this crowd. 2. Fandango Gets a Win: This was more about where Jack Swagger is in terms of this company. The new and improved Fandango is not exactly setting the world on fire. Swagger had almost all the offensive moves until the end. Fandango landed some kicks, went to his top rope leg drop, and actually got the win. Poor Jack Swagger has fallen down since his resurgence with his original feud with Rusev.

3. The Night for The Shield: Rollins and Cena kicked off the show and Rollins after a win last week in a cage match with the help of Brock Lesnar, Cena natural gets his win back this week after Hogan made the match for his good buddy John Cena. Roman Reigns was paired with the Big Show and was booked terrible only able to get a count out win after hitting Big Show with a superman punch over the announce table. Big Show really seems to have little interest in helping Reigns get over. Dean Ambrose meantime in the Main Event once again losses to Bray Wyatt in your typical Christmas Street fight. Overall, it was not a great night for the former members of the Shield. 4. WWE Announcers Continue To Fail: I could bring up many examples of why this is true every single week but I have a specific example this week. Natalya was in a match with Brie and she had Nikki in her corner. During the entire match, Tyson was wearing a Nikki Bella hat and there was zero reference to it the entire match. Even in the post match where Natalya pushes Nikki off the apron and notices the hat Tyson was wearing after that. She takes it off and throws it away. Announcers made zero reference to this so if you missed it can’t blame you. 5. Piper’s Pit Isn’t What It Use To Be: It was kind of a pathetic attempt at nostalgia with Roddy Piper showing up and his guest was Rusev. Piper mispronounced his name and predictably introduced Ryback who had a bow on him no less and he attempted to attack Rusev but he was able to escape. Ryback was over with Minnesota crowd so it looks like the C.M Punk comments have not affected Ryback and his face push of late. Seeing Piper and Hogan at their age is more sad and pathetic than any sort of nostalgic feel good moment.

The match quality on this show was pretty good overall but some questionable booking and little plot advancement. The biggest note was Rose heeling on Bunny and I am not even kidding about that. I didn’t hate this show but if I had missed it, I can’t say that much happened I needed to see.